Even Out of Battle Mode
by Laly Konstantin
Summary: When you're out to coffee, and you want to read a mind... Get into a Seiryuu reincarnation fic!
1. Resurrection

Even Out of Battle Mode  
chapter 1  
  
by Laly Konstantin  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of Yuu Watase's characters, obviously. This story is intended to entertain, not to profit. (I don't really own the others, either - they refuse to behave if I act like I do.)  
  
----------  
  
The car they were borrowing from Jacob steered, Tetsuya thought, like a tricycle with the Antichrist riding it. Subjected to his standard driving style, it was likely to end up on the sidewalk if he didn't do the unthinkable and... he cringed to think of it... obey the speed limit. As though there weren't enough to think about, what with driving on the wrong side of the street, shifting gears with force than his own cars never required, and keeping an eye out for patrolmen who might not consider a Japanese license sufficient accreditation for cruising in suburban North America.  
  
Then the speed bumps introduced themselves. 'Oh, man,' Keisuke complained. 'Are we even going in the right direction?'  
  
'I have no idea,' Tetsuya muttered. 'This street doesn't even know where it's going,' he added, as it curved yet again. A stop sign appeared, and he braked - a little harder than necessary. Damien's tricycle still wound up halfway through a right turn. 'I really don't want to do this any longer than I have to.'  
  
'Jacob told us to call him if we need help,' Keisuke suggested, taking a cel out of the glove compartment.  
  
Tetsuya pulled over. 'That's mine, idiot.' Keisuke put up his hands, about to explain, but Tetsuya reached over and snatched it back. 'I didn't charge it yesterday.'  
  
'Ehh.' Keisuke reclaimed the useless chunk of plastic. 'Why don't we find a pay phone, then?'  
  
His friend looked skeptical. 'Which way?' he rhetorically asked. Keisuke buried his head in his hands. Tetsuya, taking pity, switched off the car's ignition. 'Why don't we just ask to use the phone?' he suggested, gesturing to the quite, nondescript, apparently very dull house they'd stopped at.  
  
Keisuke found a number of reasons, such as how creepy they might appear to the tenants, or what sort of people might live there. He, or more likely his hangover, added some unrelated conjecture about what objects he intended to use to bash Tetsuya's head in if they ended up in prison for this, though Tetsuya didn't quite follow his logic on how this would be illegal.   
  
Finally, though, Keisuke just warned his friend to be ready to drive away as fast as possible, and pushed himself out of the car. Leaving his door open. Tetsuya, resigned, leaned back against the headrest and took the keys out of the ignition.  
--------  
After a round of Mario Kart, the aftermath made it clear what had happened in Seit's basement. Rose laughed and dropped her controller on the floor, shaking her long brown hair over her shoulders. Sean made a victorious fist, Seit switched back to the selection screen with unmistakable spite, and Natalie handed her controller back to Ron. 'Thanks for letting me play,' she said, awkwardly polite. Ron shrugged it off just as politely.  
  
Trying to hide her irritation, Natalie jumped up. 'Seit,' she offhandedly called, 'how long until the pasta is finished?'   
  
Seit waited a moment to set down his controller, and shifted his blue eyes to the short girl who stood on the other side of the room. 'It's probably time to check on it,' he granted, crossing to the staircase. 'Well, Natalie? Come on.' Casting a brief look in his direction to remind him she wasn't to be ordered around, Natalie followed him out of the basement.  
  
'Oh, of course he makes us wait for him,' Sean muttered. Both Rose and Ron smiled at his reaction. 'He has to throw around that -' the shorter boy gestured to convey his meaning, but couldn't find the words.  
  
'His imperial air,' Rose finished. Before Sean could get jealous, she leaned into his lap, looking up at him with seductive brown eyes. 'He's afraid of losing to you again.'  
  
Ron watched the two with masked annoyance. 'Oh, yes, terrified,' he remarked, not taking his eyes from the screen. He shifted from Toad to Peach, and back again, still a bit uncomfortable when he was left alone with the couple. Losing his best friend to a girlfriend had been one of the less welcome developments of his high school life. On the other hand, getting irritated and stomping off wouldn't help anything, so he kept his mouth shut. Most of the time.  
  
'Well, I'm hungry anyway,' Sean admitted. 'If those two ever come back...'  
  
'What's their... thing, anyway?' Ron had to ask. He wondered about those two... he knew Seit and Natalie weren't a couple (not that he cared), but he always wondered who was following whose lead. He didn't see Natalie obeying a guy because she was interested in him... on the other hand, he couldn't imagine Seit taking interest in anyone.   
  
He shouldn't have asked out loud, though, as it gave Rose an opening for another of her theories. And Sean, of course, found fault with some part, and it was bound to fall apart into a mild disagreement any second. What was with *those* two, he thought bitterly. It was like Rose made Sean a different person, sensitive and controlling and agressive.   
  
Like a warning, the three heard the doorbell from upstairs. The couple's quarrel halted.  
  
Stop it, Ron warned himself. You are *not* going to envy the attention Rose gets from him. What's wrong with you, lately? Why should that girl worry you so much?  
------------------------------  
Upstairs in the kitchen, Natalie found the pantry and pulled out a bottle of oil. 'How much do I add?' she called, before Seit could leave the kitchen and get the door. She couldn't hear his low answer, though, hurried and muffled as it was. Leaving the oil on the counter, she followed to the foyer.  
  
'Hello,' Seit greeted the man at the door. He certainly didn't recognise him - a young man, maybe twenty years old, with light brown hair and puppy-dog eyes.  
  
On the other side of the threshold, Yuuki Keisuke had to keep himself from running back to their borrowed car and telling Tetsuya to step on it. He opted for his second impulse, which was a whole lot suaver: 'NAKAGO?'  
  
'Pardon me?' the young man responded cordially.   
  
Another person appeared at his elbow, and Keisuke subjected her to a double-take. 'Miaka -' he started to lecture, and realised the illogic of it. Besides, the girl didn't really look like Miaka - her hair was a little too curly, her eyes a little less green. And his sister was cuter when she got confused.  
  
Coming back to himself, Keisuke bowed and apologised. 'You look like..someone. Both of you. Uh... can I use phone?' Stumbling over his tongue anyway, he hoped his English was at least comprehensible.   
  
The two exchanged glances. 'All right...' the boy finally allowed, sounding far too much like Nakago for Keisuke's peace of mind.   
  
'New thought,' he improvised, 'my friend has the phone number. Getting him!' Keisuke sang as he dashed back down the steps.  
  
'Wow, nice car,' Natalie remarked, and followed him outside. 'Oh, but it's a rental, isn't it?'  
  
'Yeah,' Keisuke replied, wondering how the pseudo-sister had caught up to him.  
'Tetsuya!'  
  
The man in sunglasses stepped out of the car, eyebrows well above his eyewear's upper frame. 'Keisuke! eh - Miaka?'  
  
'Miaka mitai, ne?' He launched into a bit of Japanese, and the girl proved herself in Tetsuya's eyes as not-Miaka by making it clear she didn't understand, and thought their conduct rather rude. After a few minutes of conversation, she cleared her throat.  
  
'WHAT?' the two men responded.   
  
Natalie tried to compose herself. 'If you'd like to use the phone, Seit's probably waiting for you inside.' It was fairly obvious she was more interested in her pride than in whether or not her friend waited.  
  
'Eh... okay.' Tetsuya ran a hand through his hair. 'Seit is... the blond one? The one like Nakago?'  
  
The girl froze. 'Nakago?' she muttered. 'Why does that sound familiar?'  
  
Immediately interested, Keisuke pulled her back around. 'Tetsuya, go make the call,' he ordered, in English so the girl wouldn't feel threatened. 'Can I talk to you out here for a minute?' At her nod, he tightened his grip on her arm and continued. 'Has..um... Seit ever told a past life to you? Do you believe in past life?'  
  
'Um...' what a rapidly weirdening conversation, Natalie thought. 'No, I don't think he would believe in it. Maybe I do. What is your name anyway? Your boyfriend called you-'  
  
'Keisuke. Have you ever heard of a book - um...' he quickly translated the title in his head, 'Four gods earth heaven... never mind.' At her expression, he abandoned the effort.   
  
'Who's Nakago?' she repeated. 'It sounds familiar.'  
  
'He's in the book, a general, a really bad guy,' Keisuke summarised. 'And he looked like your friend, but older and everything.' Her earlier words came back to him. 'My - boyfriend?'  
--------------------  
Seit, having directed Tetsuya to the telephone, excused himself to check downstairs. 'Sean is probably eating the others by now.' Tetsuya nodded cordially, and started a conversation as Seit headed downstairs.  
  
'Who' here?' Rose asked, swinging a foot over the arm of the couch as Sean played with her hair.  
  
Seit threw out his hands. 'They seem to be a pair of confused tourists. Looking for a phone to use. They kept calling me Nakago.'  
  
'Nakago?' Sean's ears nearly perked. 'Are they Japanese?'  
  
Seit contemplated. 'Quite possibly.'  
  
Rose knew what was coming, and sat up before Sean could accidentally decapitate her by standing up too fast. 'I want to meet them!' Seit almost thought the boy would wait for his approval, but Sean dashed past him and up the stairs.  
  
'Oh, no,' Rose and Ron said in unison. Rose stood up to follow her boyfriend, but Ron lingered a moment, waving away Seit's questioning look.  
-------------  
The man in the kitchen was carrying on what seemed to be a slightly awkward conversation. He was sweating so badly that Rose wondered, for a moment, if he'd fallen into the spaghetti pot. He seemed to get cut off a lot, and waved his hands around, turning blue to the top of his sunglasses.   
  
Sean couldn't help himself. 'I wear my sunglasses at night,' he sang into Rose's ear. Her giggle drew the man's attention for a split second. The conversation soon called his attention back, but now he seemed to be making excuses.  
  
'Yui, you won't believe this. I swear Suboshi just showed up in this house we stopped at -'  
  
'Suboshi! And you said Nakago's already there! Where are you?' Yui demanded hesitantly, if that was possible, that they come get her right now.  
  
'I told you, we tried to find out. Jacob is coming over so we can caravan back.'  
  
'Do you think he'd get me if I called him now?'  
  
'I don't know. See if he has his phone. I love you!' he added quickly, before she could hang up.  
  
'I know that word!' Sean half-shouted. He quickly regretted it, as the man dropped the phone to stare at the trio of teenagers now staring at him. Raising a hesitant hand to wave, he also absently backed up a few steps.   
  
'Sorry,' all four occupants of the kitchen chorused, then laughed awkwardly.  
  
Tetsuya addressed Seit. 'Well, our friend is on his way to pick us up. Sorry to bother you this long.'  
  
'Why are you apologising?' Sean responded. 'Glad to have you.'  
  
'Sean,' Ron reminded him, surprising them all from the top of the staircase, 'this isn't your house.'  
  
'Well,' Seit finally answered, having shot Sean an appropriate look, ' would you like to sit down until he gets here?' He gestured toward the front room, and moved forward to join Tetsuya. 'Is your friend still outside?'  
  
'Yeah, with your girlfriend.' At the awkward looks the others returned, Tetsuya continued in a rush. 'Don't worry, Keisuke's no lecher. And she looks like his sister, so he wouldn't be after her anyway.' Wrapped in his explanations, Tetsuya didn't notice the sound of the front door opening. 'Actually, that girl looks kind of like Miaka, too. But anyway, he's not going to be stealing her or something.'   
  
A voice rose from behind him, almost venomous. 'I'm not his girlfriend,' Natalie fired from between clenched teeth.   
  
Tetsuya laughed awkwardly, backing up in the opposite direction now. He was about to speak, but Keisuke came to his defense - admittedly, not in the manner he expected. 'Well, you thought he was *my* boyfriend. Calm down.'  
  
Natalie looked at Seit. 'You know, you could have corrected him.' Seit only raised an eyebrow, and asked if they could get through.  
  
The rather confused group settled around the front room. Keisuke and Tetsuya took a couch facing the front door, and Sean eagerly sat beside them; rather possesively, Rose sat in his lap. Ron took a chair in the far corner, and Natalie shared its partner with the family's cleverly-named Cat. Seit, smoothly playing host, offered drinks, but as everyone declined, he settled on the arm of Natalie's chair.  
  
The tableau rather bothered Keisuke, but he shook it off. 'Ne, Tetsuya,' he began, and realised he'd better speak English to prevent alienating the others. 'Did you talk to Jacob?' His 'boyfriend' nodded. 'And Yui, of course.'  
  
Ron actually appeared interested, something the others rarely saw. 'Yui?' He thought, I swear there's a memory with that name on it.   
  
Seeing Tetsuya a little too concerned by the boy's interest, Keisuke spoke up. 'Someone who came with us.'  
  
The Suboshi-type boy spoke up. 'His girlfriend? I heard him say "I love you" on the phone.'  
  
Keisuke nodded. 'I told you we're not dating,' he added, to Natalie.   
  
'You also told me I look like your sister, and Seit looks like someone in a book, and before I could ask you why a guy your age is reading picture books, you insisted on coming back inside.'   
  
Ron, who'd been closing his eyes, opened them again when he heard a stop in Natalie's demands. 'Do you have a picture of Yui?' An artist, he was good at forming mental pictures, but he couldn't figure out where the image that name had brought came from. Tetsuya delayed for a moment, but produced his wallet and pulled out a small photo-booth sticker of Yui and Miaka.   
  
Sean pulled it out of his hand. 'Cool!' he exclaimed. 'Which one? The blonde, right, because the other one looks like Natalie. That's your sister?' Keisuke nodded. Sean handed Natalie the picture, and the girl glanced silently at her 'twin' for a moment before passing it on to Seit.  
  
'Wow, she does look like you,' Seit exclaimed.  
  
'How can you tell?' Natalie challenged. 'It's a tiny picture.'  
  
Finally, Seit passed the picture into Ron's hand. The normally stoic boy took the image carefully, and froze. Trancelike, he murmured, 'Yui... Yui-sama.'  
  
Keisuke and Tetsuya sat bolt upright, and Sean himself jumped at the expression on his friend's face.   
  
'Ron, what the hell...?' Natalie asked, stunned to see the boy display emotion.   
  
'I must be absolutely crazy,' Ron muttered, and looked as though he would pass the sticker back before he froze again, gazing at the girl's image. 'She grew her hair, but... this is Yui-sama. And I was her warrior.' The words came out quite calmly, almost conversationally, but the others all watched him in amazement.  
  
'I didn't think *he* was...' Keisuke whispered to his friend. Agitated, Tetsuya rose, crossed the room menacingly, and stood over Ron's chair.  
  
'Who were you?' His tone of voice conveyed something of a threat... as it stood, he couldn't think of one Seiryuu star whose head he *wouldn't* gladly tear off for what they'd done to Yui. Keisuke began to look nervous.  
  
Ron hardly noticed anything, as he tried to deal with having another person's memories invade his head. 'I was... I was Suboshi.' Tetsuya's fist tightened, but Ron ignored it, turning to Seit. 'It's true, you look just like Nakago. I don't know, though...' His focus shifted again, to Sean. 'You were my brother, though. It makes so much sense. But how can you like a girl who looks so much like *her*?'  
  
Sean blinked, trying to comprehend the change in his friend's personality. 'Ron...'  
  
'You were Amiboshi, don't you remember? The one who switched sides. The one who said we'd always be together.'  
  
Sean blinked, and looked into Ron's eyes... and it came back to him, too. 'But you were the one who chose Yui over me.'  
  
'Oh, my God...' Natalie muttered. 'What are you people talking about?' Rose turned her concerned eyes to the other girl, and blinked sorrowfully. Natalie, seeing something different about her friend's gaze, stood up and confronted the visitors. 'Keisuke... and you... what are you doing to these guys? Is this that past-life thing you were grilling me about?'  
  
Tetsuya shook his head. 'I guess we were right about one twin, but... the other guy. I never would have guessed.'  
  
'He's a lot taller than Suboshi was,' Keisuke corroborated. 'But they do look like brothers, now that you mention it.'  
  
'They're cousins,' Natalie interrupted. 'Who are these people?' Rose reached up to grab her best friend by the hand, and Natalie calmed down. 'Did the glasses guy tell you guys what this is all about? Keisuke was holding out on me, and...' she quieted when Rose squeezed her hand.  
  
'You don't remember, then?' Rose asked softly.  
  
Natalie froze. 'What do you mean? It's not like I could actually be his little sister. She's not dead, right? I mean, she's old enough in the picture and I can't have been *her* in a past life...' Looking into Rose's sympathetic eyes, she finally calmed down. 'I'm sorry, I'm really confused here. I'd like to know who these people think we are.'  
  
Rose shook her head, and stood up, freeing Sean to stand as well and cross the room. As he whispered to Ron, the others focused their attention on Rose, wondering what she could possibly mean. 'It's funny that we both tried looking like the other priestess this time,' she said lightly, her high voice sounding, Keisuke realised, quite a bit like Miaka's. 'I'm surprised I didn't try to look like Yui-sama.'  
  
Keisuke gasped. 'Soi! You were Soi, weren't you?' He pointed, half-panicking and expecting to be struck down by a lightning bolt then and there. He hadn't noticed the maroon tone to the girl's hair, or the confidence of her stance - exactly the kind of girl he'd imagined Soi to be. She was short and petite this time, but it didn't diminish the strength of her personality.  
  
Tetsuya, meanwhile, was quite busy trying not to explode. He was well aware how rude it would be to break up the twins in order to make sure Suboshi understood exactly what he thought of him, so he'd shifted his attention to the young Nakago deadringer.   
  
'I don't suppose you have anything to say to your human shield?' he challenged.   
  
Seit blinked. 'Are you offering yourself as a target?' he replied coldly, suddenly finding his guest less interesting. 'If it helps, Natalie, he didn't explain anything to me, either.'  
  
'It's okay, Seit,' Rose murmured, drawing Natalie closer. 'You're not who he thinks you are.'  
  
Tetsuya turned back to the girls. 'Who the hell is he, then?'  
  
'Calm down, Tetsuya!' Keisuke muttered.  
  
Seit laughed. 'So I'm not Nakago?'  
  
Rose answered teasingly. 'Why don't you remember?' Rose wrapped her arms around an uncomprehending Natalie, and her tone softened. 'Then, maybe it's better that you don't.'   
  
Seeing her friend upset worried Natalie, and she immediately attacked the source. 'What are you trying to do here?' she demanded, confronting Keisuke as she gently pulled away from Rose.   
  
The 'twins' turned their heads - simultaneously, Tetsuya noticed - at the sound of a car door slamming outside. He rose and started for the door, but Seit beat him there. 'Seeing as I live here,' he explained with a nod. He appeared a bit disturbed, though, shaken out of his contemplation. Tetsuya stepped back, thinking, I'm not convinced that this guy isn't Nakago, and I don't want him to see Yui before I do. Nonetheless, he had to follow him to the door.   
  
'It *is* Yui,' Sean murmured to Ron, noticing his cousin's strange expression. Both turned their attention to the quiet conversation in the foyer, where Seit greeted a man they didn't recognise. Tetsuya hugged their priestess and whispered something to her. She turned a cautious glance into the room, and almost winced. Ron, in return, looked away with a sorrowful expression. Not a particularly dramatic expression, but remarkably open for Ron. Sean, as himself, couldn't believe it, but he was starting to recognise Ron as the boy from Amiboshi's memories.   
  
'This is going to be so messy to sort out,' he worried. 'Ron?'  
  
'It's good to meet you,' Jacob said cordially. 'Seit? And who are your friends?'  
  
Seit paused. 'I may not be the best one to ask that question. The tall one is Ron, his cousin is Sean' - he smiled sardonically at the rhyme for a moment - 'and the girls are Rose and Natalie.'  
  
'Which is the one ripping Keisuke's nose off?' Jacob asked, a bit confused. 'And Yui told me they're people they know?'  
  
Seit shook his head, and turned for a moment. 'Ah, that's our graceful Natalie for you. As I said, I'm not clear on how Tetsuya and his friend know them, but one of them could likely explain it to you.' He turned to speak to Tetsuya and introduce himself to Yui.   
  
Jacob, thus freed, made his way to the couch Keisuke was crammed into. 'Natalie?' he asked. 'How do you know my friends?' Natalie, interrupted, spun to face him. 'You don't seem especially happy to see them,' he felt compelled to add.  
  
Surprisingly, she refrained from speaking as the other girl answered. 'She doesn't know them, actually. I don't really know them, either, but I apparently knew Yui... a long time ago.' Rose leaned over to Keisuke, becoming a bit more visible to Jacob and causing Keisuke to turn a bit red. 'I'd like to know how you know our story, actually. I'm guessing you heard it from Yui-sama?'  
  
A realisation struck Keisuke. 'Tetsuya! They didn't know, did they?'  
  
'Huh?' Tetsuya, arm still wrapped around Yui, finally ventured more than five feet from the door.   
  
'You never told them they were in a book, did you, Yui?' Keisuke tried to ignore the looks the others gave him for speaking in a language they didn't understand, but he figured it was better to be cautious about this.  
  
Yui closed her eyes, realising. 'I didn't. Of course I couldn't tell them I was pulled into a book.' Again, she allowed herself to glance around at her former seishi, and immediately regretted it. Another Amiboshi, a boy who resembled Suboshi when she looked for it, a young copy of Nakago... and then, two girls who looked more like Miaka than the people they'd been in the Universe of the Four Gods.   
  
'Is there any way we could deal with this later?' Keisuke finally asked the others, distress quite obvious as he tried to escape the circle Jacob, Natalie and Rose formed around him.  
  
Natalie glanced down at him, aborting his efforts to stand. She glanced at Rose, and at the boys in the corner. 'I think that's a good idea. I still have no idea what you're talking about.'  
  
'It's an amazing feat to make Natalie admit that,' Seit commented. Her gaze turned quite meaningfully neutral, and she allowed Keisuke to stand only so that she could take his place on the couch. She wondered why he had to make their rivalry material now, when they usually kept it tacit. In front of these people, who seemed to think they knew so much... She caught herself gazing at the blonde girl. Yui, she wondered, what did you tell these guys that made them decide they know my friends better than I do? The girl hadn't even said a word in English since she came in.  
  
Noticing the other girl's attention on her, Yui gazed back. I should know who she is, she thought. Her friend is Soi. She knows that, and it shows just by looking at her, knowing that's what I'm looking for. But she doesn't even know who she is.   
  
Is she really one of them? Yui shook her head. She couldn't think who it would be. The other girl shrugged in response, then turned to her friend.  
  
'You know,' Jacob said, 'maybe it's selfish of me, but I'd like to get back in time for dinner. Maybe you guys should all have time to think about this? Right?'  
  
Keisuke was quick to agree. 'Why don't we all exchange numbers, and get going?'  
  
'How long will you all be here?' Sean inquired, looking at Yui and back to Ron. He didn't know what this would do to his friends, but he couldn't just let go of the chance to understand it. He owed it, he thought, to his former self, and more than that he owed it to Ron. My little brother, he thought ironically.  
  
The three visitors exchanged looks. 'Until the sixteenth, right?' Yui said, her English even less accented than the men's.   
  
'So there's plenty of time,' Jacob said. 'Let me leave a number.' He pulled out a pen, and Seit provided a piece of junk mail to write on.   
  
He then gave Jacob half of the envelope, on which he'd written his phone number. 'Do you want the others?' he offered.  
  
'We.. can get them later,' Tetsuya justified, rather eager to escape the situation. Yui nodded, and thanked their hosts for their hospitality. 'It was good to meet you...' she hesitated, 'again.'   
---------------------------------------------  
AN: I don't like to say it, but... R/R. No threats if you don't, except that I'll keep writing until someone tells me to stop. Quelle horreur! 


	2. Two people per head

Even Out of Battle Mode  
Chapter 2  
  
by Laly Konstantin  
  
The established reincarnations:  
Ron - Suboshi  
Sean - Amiboshi  
Rose - Soi  
Seit - Nakago?  
------------------------------  
  
No one said anything, even after they watched Yui shut the door and heard her call to the others outside. Complete silence prevailed, except for the sound of water boiling over the side of a pot. Half a step into the front room, Seit turned and raced to the kitchen. 'Turning off the burner might have been a good idea,' Rose commented, eyes on the ceiling.   
  
Sean and Ron turned around at the sound of her voice, exhibiting shadowed expressions that brought Natalie's mind back to the questions she had. 'So what exactly is the story, anyway?'  
  
They exchanged glances, and Rose lowered her gaze back to Natalie. 'Ummmm..' Sean and Ron began simultaneously, and exchanged a glance. 'You do believe in past lives, don't you?' Natalie blinked and nodded, surprised that Sean would remember that. 'That makes it easier.' Sean then leaned over and whispered something in Ron's ear, and the other boy smiled but shook his head.   
  
  
Rose giggled a little. 'You two are going to be helpful,' she muttered, rolling her eyes but smiling affectionately. 'Basically, we all knew each other in a past life. Ron and I,' she added hastily, 'and Sean, and I always figured that anyway. But the strange thing is that we also knew that girl, Yui.' From her voice, it was hard to tell exactly what she'd thought of 'that girl.' 'Even though it was a long time ago, though, she was about the same. So I start thinking it was in another world, or something. I mean, I remember her as being from another world.'  
  
'The priestess from another world,' Ron agreed wistfully.   
  
'I don't even remember how she came to ours,' Sean commented. 'Well, I only saw her a few times, anyway.'  
  
Without missing a beat, Ron continued. 'She brought me with her, once, when she came back to this world.'  
  
'But of course you didn't remember until you saw her again,' Sean commented, and there was a veiled teasing in his tone.   
  
'Yeah... you didn't remember until I did, aniki.' Ron didn't stumble over the world, but he didn't sound entirely like himself either. Natalie shook her head, and he caught sight of the motion and looked away from Sean again. 'Sean was my twin brother,' he explained, 'and Rose was another person we knew... pretty nice if I remember. Kinda obsessed, though.'   
  
Rose blushed a little, but laughed right back. '*I* was obsessed! "Yui-sama! Yui-sama!" He was obsessed with that girl who just came by.'   
  
Natalie blinked at a slightly faster rate. Ron obsessed with a girl? 'Okay... so you all knew Yui, and you were both obsessed, and I'm still not getting this at all.' Somewhere in the silence between her reiterations, she heard Seit muttering in the background. 'And Nakago?'  
  
'Is who Rose was obsessed with,' Ron scoffed, 'and he was a jerk. Sent my brother off to die, lied to Yui, all sorts of wonderful things.' Somewhere in his sarcasm, Rose thought she still heard a bit of grudging respect.  
  
'You wouldn't have said that if Seit were in the room, would you?' Sean had to ask. Ron cracked up, shaking his head, and his brother continued with a bemused expression. 'He was kind of the leader, since he was really powerful. We were all the priestess's warriors, born with these sort of.. special powers,' and he gestured to demonstrate. 'But he really was the strongest, and I guess that's why the others followed him.'  
  
'You all followed Nakago?' Natalie asked skeptically, casting a quick glance toward the kitchen. 'And they think Seit was this guy?' The footsteps she heard materialised into a tall blond form in the doorway.  
  
'So doubtful,' Seit exclaimed.   
  
Rose shrugged, and spoke before Natalie could. 'You don't remember, right? So who are you to question it?'  
  
Seit crossed the room and sat down next to Natalie. 'Actually, I do remember Nakago.'  
  
Rose's eyes widened. 'Oh? You remember him, or you remember being him?'  
  
'Just about to ask that,' Natalie commented, starting to wonder why she was even there. If they all knew each other in a past life, and had old grudges to settle - she thought of Ron teasing Rose for her obsession with Nakago, and how Sean might react to that now - she wasn't sure she wished to be in the middle of it.   
  
Seit shrugged. 'I looked in the mirror, and - I remembered. I do look like Nakago, don't I?'   
  
Shrugging, and mocking the pose Seit had unintentionally struck, Ron commented: 'Maybe a scrawnier version.'  
  
Seit laughed. 'You never did like him. It was painfully obvious, you know.'   
  
'He did have good reason,' Sean responded.  
  
ROse closed her eyes, getting frustrated. 'None of us were exactly wonderful people, okay?'  
  
'At least you know who you were,' Seit muttered, thinking of Yui again. 'Every time you say something, thinking I can't hear you, it makes me think of another image.' He turned his focus to the door, then to Ron. 'Suboshi kissing Yui, and being an absolute klutz about it. Or poor Soi,' he continued, looking to Rose, 'the expression on your face when-!'  
  
'You must have been Nakago,' Ron interrupted, standing up. 'I can't think of anyone else I disliked so much. And I keep thinking of what it would be like to impale you.'  
  
Despite herself, Natalie laughed.   
  
'Hard as it is to imagine you taking that kind of action against anyone, Ron... are you sure you're not letting your old self take over?' Seit stood, crossing his arms, and leaned against the wall. He caught sight of his reflection in the window. He looked like Nakago; and despite the fact that Ron was a match for his height this time, the reminder of Nakago's power made it easier to laugh off the other boy's outburst.  
  
Rose shook her head. 'I'm not really convinced.' She couldn't explain why, though Natalie's gaze was urging more information out of her; she just knew something about the situation didn't fit.  
  
Sean, who'd been musing in silence while his former twin boiled over, looked up. 'What about the Suzaku warriors? Were we all on the same side?' He cast a glance at Natalie, to see if the word brought out any reaction. By this point, she accepted everything blank-faced, as though it were amusing but meaningless. The same with the name of the rival god.  
  
'Wouldn't Yui have mentioned it?' Ron asked, skin crawling at the mention of the other warriors. *Tamahome,* he thought, *I hated him too.* The name brought a number of half-mad memories, and he tried to shut them away and hear what Sean was saying now.  
  
'It's safe to assume they would have mentioned it. I can see Natalie being from another side, but the rest of us...'  
  
Natalie interrupted. 'Wait. So who are you guys saying I would have been, assuming I'm even involved in this?' She didn't really want to hear the answer. Something about the entire story was beginning to repulse her. 'And by the way, I really don't think I am.'  
  
'I... disagree,' Sean answered. 'If anything, I'm more surprised by Seit than by you.'  
  
'You would be,' Seit commented.  
  
'She wasn't Ashitare,' Rose concluded. 'She could be Miboshi, since I never knew anything about him and can't exclude that. I never liked him much, but you could be Tomo and I wouldn't hold it against you.' She tried to gauge Natalie's reactions.   
  
'Would Miboshi wind up looking like Miaka?' Sean asked.  
  
'Wait,' Natalie stopped him. 'You knew Miaka, too?'  
  
'Hated her,' Ron conceded.  
  
'Liked her,' Sean lashed back with a smile.  
  
'Pretended to be her,' Rose raised an arm, and laughed a little. 'With Tomo's help, of course.'  
  
'Seriously?' Ron incredulously asked. 'I never knew that. So that's why you look like her.'  
  
'She was the other priestess, wasn't she?' Seit supplied. 'The even more gullible girl.'  
  
'Misogynist,' Natalie muttered. 'Did anyone else like her? Enough that they'd be...'  
  
'You?' Sean supplied. He smiled, and it unnerved Natalie for some reason. 'Well, I think any of us would have switched places with the Suzaku, given the chance-'  
  
'Brag about it, why don't you?'  
  
'-but maybe none of us repented as extremely as you did.' He fixed his eyes on Natalie again, trying to decide what could make her remember. Somehow, he was sure, but he didn't want to bring it up unless she realised it herself.  
  
Rose watched Seit, still wondering why Nakago would have returned in such an obvious manner. She remembered the unhappy man who had tossed in his sleep, tortured by a life story as tragic as those the rest of Seiryuu's chosen warriors had suffered. She remembered the smirk on his face, the cold manner, the bare minimum of humanity he'd allowed to survive in his heart, and wondered if Seit really remembered Nakago as he had been. If he did, how could he smile like that? Maybe he didn't remember it all for that reason.  
  
At the same moment, Ron considered that maybe Natalie had a reason for not remembering at all. *If she was Miboshi,* he considered, *then she could have done any kind of things, things anyone would want to forget. I barely knew Miboshi, but sometimes he seemed even worse than Nakago.*  
  
Sean had left his thoughts drift to a simpler topic, and decided to interrupt the silence with it. 'I'm absolutely starving, you guys. We should get dinner eventually.'  
  
Most of the others burst out laughing, and cheerfully agreed that they couldn't work much more of this out right now. Natalie sighed in relief, and Ron muttered an affectionate 'hollow leg.' Set against the overall lightened mood, then, the odd look Seit sent in his direction only bothered him a little.  
--------------------------------------  
AN: Some minor alterations. I hope this 'solid' chapter isn't too dull... the next one jumps around more. 


	3. Repercussion

Even Out of Battle Mode  
Chapter 3  
  
by Laly Konstantin  
  
Disclaimer in chapter 1  
  
By request: the established reincarnations!  
Ron - Suboshi  
Sean - Amiboshi  
Rose - Soi  
Seit - claims Nakago, but others disagree  
Natalie - claims none, but others disagree  
--------------------------------------  
  
Yui rode home, forgoing conversation to think. She couldn't believe her seishi would draw each other even after being reborn. They were hardly even together, not really allies, as warriors.   
  
With regret, she also considered that she'd barely known them.   
  
So, with their common destiny fulfilled, why would they come together again in this life? Some kind of cosmic justice, or joint penance?  
  
This consideration was interrupted by a shout from the car ahead. 'Stop tailgating!' Keisuke shouted, leaning halfway out of the passenger-side window.  
  
'Try the pedal on the right!' Tetsuya exclaimed in response. He glanced quickly at Yui, and caught her humoured expression with relief. However calm and reasonable Yui appeared, he'd secretly worried that, where her warriors were concerned, all bets were off. Obviously she was thinking about the events of the last hour, but they couldn't be affecting her too badly.   
  
Yet. On the the other hand, she could be in shock, and when the implications had time to hit... Tetsuya let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding, just as Yui opened her mouth to ask why he was turning blue.  
  
Another deep breath. 'Road rage,' he finally lied, with a less-than-outraged shrug.   
  
Already thinking about her warriors again, Yui leaned back against the headrest. It's just like before, she realised. Miaka had to bring her warriors together, but mine... gathered without me. The twins, Soi, Nakago... that left three. Three chances to take some initiative, and prove herself a responsible miko? Three warriors less connected to each other, or to her?   
  
She might not even recognise the forms her dissatisfied seishi took this time, if Soi and Suboshi could change as they had. That doubt crept into her mind. The phone number, sitting on the dashboard, slid off and into her lap.  
  
'Is that some kind of sign?' She blinked at it. 'Nakago's number.' She shook her head, oblivious to all but the half-envelope, but no longer comfortable with the silence.  
  
Tetsuya jerked the wheel, and they careened into Jacob's garage next to the other car. He blinked, adjusting to the dim garage lighting. Words from a book he hadn't seen in years echoed in his vision. 'Does it start with him this time, too?'   
------------------------------------------  
Since no one had the patience to try pasta again, the seishi settled for frozen pizza. Somehow, in the space of half an hour, they'd already let enough seep in from their memories to start using that word on each other.  
  
Carrying two pies downstairs, they arranged themselves in the basement once more. Of course, this attracted the dogs. As Ron took the first bite of pizza, he taunted them with his other hand. 'Which one of you was Ashitare?' he sarcastically queried. Theo, hyper and easily fooled, pawed his knee.   
  
'Neither, I hope,' Rose replied.   
  
Seit laughed. 'If Theo was Ashitare, you should give her your pizza. She could get desperate enough to eat us.'  
  
'Who'd she eat last time?' Sean asked, a little alarmed.   
  
'Still no idea what's going on,' Natalie muttered. She turned to Rose, who was looking at her like an unsolved puzzle. 'What?'  
  
'I'm absolutely sure you were there. Hmm... I met Subaru and Tokaki once...' Rose tilted her head, smiling with a slightly acid expression.  
  
Ron, having glanced at the VCR clock and reasoned that it wasn't really midnight, checked his wristwatch. 'I should probably be getting home soon.'  
  
'Oh, really?' Internally, Ron scowled at the false regret in Seit's voice.  
  
'I'll come with you,' Sean immediately responded. Since he'd started to remember, he felt the bond of several years' friendship further strengthen between himself and Ron. 'You're walking, right?'  
  
'I might as well come along,' Natalie jumped in. 'It's the same direction.' Immediately, she realised the 'twins' might not want company. On the other hand, she might be able to figure a bit more out just by hearing them talk.  
  
'Ah, so this is how it goes. After I feed you, you want nothing more to do with me.'  
  
'Exactly right!' Rose, flopped over the arm of the couch, pushed herself upright and to her feet, looking Seit in the eye. Ron and Sean, gathering games and controllers from the floor (and naturally, leaving their smeared plates where they sat) paused in their motion and exchanged a glance.   
  
I can't believe it didn't occur to me that this is going to affect my relationship with Rose, he berated himself. Damn it.   
  
'I'll probably be leaving with the rest of them. Safety in numbers, you know,' she told Seit rather sweetly. Suddenly aware that all eyes were on her, she shot a quick smile at Sean before she added, 'Call one of us tomorrow. We should all talk about this.'  
  
'Sure,' Seit agreed, amused again by her behaviour. She turned her head back to flash a quick smile, and crossed to where Natalie was waiting by the back door. 'What, no hug?' he asked, practically sensing the irritation from Sean's direction. A rapid movement, and Sean had joined the girls. Ron, who had noticed on time that he and Sean both had a grip on the same controller's cord, stood that cord's length apart from the others. Apparently, he was a little irritated with all of them.  
  
Natalie gasped as Rose actually returned to hug Seit. Of course, Rose was a clingy person and probably meant nothing by it... but Soi...  
  
Sean spun around. 'I'm leaving now.' By necessity, Ron followed him outside.  
  
Over Rose's shoulder, Seit caught sight of Natalie, lingering to wait for her friend. A memory sprung up. 'Tomo always envied Soi for having Nakago, didn't he?' he asked Rose just above a whisper.  
  
Rose, pulling away, cast an arm out as though brushing his words away. 'It took you that long to remember?' Another smile, and she was at Natalie's side and beyond. With a jaded, will-this-never-end? expression, Natalie waved as she closed the door behind her, cutting off the evening's drafty air.  
-----------------------------------------  
Ron saw the girls' silhouettes appear on the sidewalk just as he and Sean prepared to round a curve in the street. He tapped Sean on the shoulder, but the other boy didn't find their presence a compelling reason to stop and wait. If anything, his pace quickened. Ron sighed. Maybe this was his penance for being the short-tempered younger brother before; at the moment, there was quite a role-reversal occurring. He quickly turned to shrug back to the girls, and moved on.  
  
'Just because you loved someone in a past life, it doesn't mean you'll love them now,' the younger boy scoffed.   
  
Ron was compelled to agree, but it was hard to ignore the way he'd reacted earlier when he'd seen Yui again. Not the photograph, the girl. She'd changed a lot since he'd last seen her... but there was no denying -  
  
Running footsteps approached from behind. 'Are you trying to ditch us?' Natalie shouted. She caught up, but in stopping herself fell a little behind again.  
  
'We kind of need to talk right now. You two can walk ahead if you want to,' Ron suggested.   
  
Sean glared at Natalie, just a little. 'Doesn't it bother you?'  
  
Natalie understood immediately, but thought, how can I explain it? She stopped in her tracks, so Rose could catch up. 'Rose and Seit? A... little.' She shook her head, trying to clear it. 'It's Rose, mostly. And together, I guess -' a narrowing of the eyes. 'It just triggered something unpleasant.'  
  
'Something unpleasant?' Ron inquired, as Rose approached within a few feet. Natalie ignored him, telling Rose that they'd been invited to walk ahead. Like a shield, she interposed herself between her friend and Sean, and said something about the guys discussing 'twin issues.'   
  
The brief interruption, though, had given Sean a chance to withdraw into a sulking mood, and Ron knew better than to try to discuss anything. His friend's expression was like a mirror of his former self. Ron pushed his hands into his jean pockets, and inside his head he skimmed memories - happy, dark, darker, psychotic. He'd finished up the happy ones, when he saw Yui's picture; looking up to Seit immediately after called up the dark, and back in the picture he saw even darker memories in Miaka, Yui's friend.  
  
He couldn't believe they were friends again.  
  
There was a psychotic undercurrent to that thought, and he didn't really dare touch it until he could get time alone. Looking up ahead, he saw Rose and Natalie walking arm-in-arm; so alike, so different, sweet and mouthy, open and shut, and for some reason those hazy renderings of the girl he had loathed didn't remind him of her at all.   
  
He thought of Soi, and he thought... strange. He thought of a hand holding out a clamshell, displaying an otherworldly city. A darker memory, he thought, that led into an untouchable one.   
  
So he didn't touch it.  
------------------------------  
  
AN: The chapters keep getting shorter, don't they? 


	4. Four kinds of goodnight

Even Out of Battle Mode  
Chapter 4  
  
by Laly Konstantin  
  
Disclaimer in chapter 1  
  
the established reincarnations:  
Ron - Suboshi  
Sean - Amiboshi  
Rose - Soi  
Seit - claims Nakago, but others disagree  
Natalie - claims none, but others disagree  
---------------------------------------------  
  
Voices drifted through the wall, speaking a language Jacob could almost understand at full volume. Muffled as they were, he couldn't figure out their words, which he supposed was just as well. Hearing his guests puzzle over their situation would only add to the guilt that was starting to weigh him down. And as he thought of the twisted history that had brought him to this point, he couldn't let anything - guilt, impatience, anything - prevent his repentance.  
  
He'd accidentally met Duke Prio on an East Coast road trip two years before, and Duke - Chiriko - had been flustered by his declaration that they'd met, a long time ago. It actually took Jacob a while to realise that the 'long time' had been centuries at least; but by then, he had intrigued the young scholar far enough that he had to confess why, exactly, he'd recognised the kid.  
  
Just as well that he hadn't tried holding out, and left the kid to think he was a child molester or something. Jacob grunted, and turned a pillow over. Cooler fabric leached a bit more of his headache out, and he drifted back into contemplation. Prio had been helpful enough when Jacob said he'd like to apologize to Suzaku no Miko, but apology wasn't really what he'd had on his mind.  
  
A guy can't help being curious, if it's in his nature. And Jacob figured, he just had to go with whatever he could get. In calling Miaka, he'd had some pleasant conversations with Keisuke; because of that, Miaka had agreed not to mention who Jacob was. With Keisuke came an excuse to visit Tokyo; with the trip, came meeting his friends, including Yui.  
  
With meeting Yui... Jacob gripped the pillowcase in fists. When he met Yui, he knew his mind wasn't settled. He couldn't quite forgive himself, and he knew she had something to do with the reason.  
  
What, he idly wondered, would happen if she figured him out? Jacob closed his eyes for the twenty-eighth time. He had time, no matter what, judging by how much trouble they had figuring themselves out.   
  
He concentrated on the names that fell out of the indistinguishable dialogue in the next room. It had to be almost midnight, by now. They'd better get some rest soon.  
-----------------------------------------  
earlier  
-----------------------------------------  
Arriving at Ron's house, both he and Sean stopped. The girls approached from halfway down the block, and they heard Rose describe a bit of her past life to a horrified Natalie. A few incredulous comments, and it was back to Rose, but in a moment the other girl waved her silent, looking ahead.  
  
'Are you two both stopping here?' she asked.  
  
'If you don't mind,' Sean responded, only looking at her for a moment before he gazed at Rose again. Ron sighed. Somehow, he suspected she would be the topic of most of their conversation tonight. He turned to the door, and pulled out his house key just as the door swung open.  
  
'Ron!' his sister exclaimed, throwing her arms around his waist.   
  
'Hi, Jayleene.' He smiled, even though his head suddenly felt as though it had been slammed into a wall. The girl wrapped around him, and the doorway, and exactly which way was up, became a little bit fuzzy. He needed to get inside and sit down. Without dislodging Jayleene, he made half-aware goodnights and convinced Sean to stop giving Rose that mournful look and come in with him.  
  
'Is everyone here?' he asked, and Jay shook her head.  
  
'Just me and Doug. You came home early!' This provided enough happiness-fuel to make Jayleene bounce out of the room and up the stairs, sliding gleefully past the 15-year-old version of Ron who stood at their foot.  
  
'Oh, I thought you might be Mom,' he mumbled. Rather drowsily, he walked into the front room and collapsed on the couch anyway. 'Hi, Sean.'  
  
'Hey Doug, good to see you.' The other boy returned something that didn't quite pass for a grin.   
  
Frustrated, Ron turned around. 'Sean, let's go.' They couldn't talk there, obviously, and there was a park only a block away. Besides that, he suddenly didn't want to be around his family. Since it suddenly didn't feel like his family.  
  
Sean followed his friend onto the porch, a little stunned by his sudden chill. 'Ron? Are you okay?'  
  
Ron took a deep breath. 'I'm okay. Suboshi's getting a little confusing, though, and I think he just told me that Jayleene and Doug aren't part of my family, really.' They're just part of my apology, he fumed.  
  
Funny. He'd spent years being dutiful, stable, keeping himself from getting emotional because there had to be *someone* stable in his family. Now he fumed, because he suddenly felt like he wasn't taking care of his family.  
  
Hitting the asphalt with Sean, he continued, 'They're Tamahome's family,' and raised his eyes to his first, oldest brother. 'I don't know if I ever told you what I did, but as Suboshi...' he scuffed his shoes against the near curb. 'I think I claimed the family I have now, when I killed them before.'  
  
It had been an untouchable memory, but now that he'd said it, a sudden freedom fell over him. After that, it couldn't get worse, could it?   
  
He looked as Sean's face, though, and the shock threw his world back into a spin. 'Aniki? Come on... we're going to talk about it, okay?'   
  
Desperation. How was he supposed to be stable when his brother - his real brother - looked so sad?   
----------------------------------------  
late, again  
----------------------------------------  
'So they just drew each other together, so they could meet, even without remembering, and then what? I'm still wondering how they'd turned up exactly where *we* came.' Tetsuya, temper flaring a little, kept forgetting to hold his voice down. He could just see Jacob waking up and kicking them all out, and he'd rather not wind up paying for a hotel after all.   
  
On the other hand, Jacob would probably let Keisuke stay around, which might explain why the other man never bothered to lower his voice. 'Because Yui's with us! I thought we agreed on that.'  
  
'But that isn't why we came here, right? You just happened to know Jacob, and he happened to invite all of us here...' Yui wasn't really focusing on what she said. Seit's phone number was sitting on the table, and when she wasn't picking it up to look at it again, she was watching it from afar. 'I know he's generous, but just because we wanted to come?'  
  
Keisuke shrugged. 'Jacob didn't know any of the kids we met today, he says. It's all just a fluke. I don't think he even knows what's going on. He's been very unobtrusive about the whole thing.'  
  
'So he doesn't know about "Universe of the Four Gods?"' Tetsuya blinked. 'I thought you met him when he was calling Miaka about it.'  
  
Keisuke shook his head. 'I think he'd met Duke Prio or something, and wanted to talk to people in Japan. Something like that. And he visited and liked you, so he invited you to come with me.'  
  
'Or so he says,' Tetsuya added.  
  
Yui shook her head, registering the conversation. 'I didn't mean to sound suspicious, I just wondered. He's nice. I just feel... weird... about this whole thing now.' She picked up the phone number. 'Not that I'm sorry I came.'  
  
'Makes you wonder why we stopped where we did, though,' Tetsuya mused. 'I think you're rubbing off on us or something, Yui-chan.' Smiling at her, he added, 'Let's all get to sleep before we wake the master of the house.'   
  
Keisuke shook his head as the others stood up. 'I still need a while to think about this, if that's okay.' General good-nights were had by all, and he wound up alone with the coffee table and the number-covered envelope.  
  
A sudden thought left his scowling slightly. 'They're not sharing a room, are they?'  
-----------------------  
Seit, always better at dreaming than he supposed most people were, actually used the night hours to call up a few more memories from his subconscious. They were too weird to just be dreams built around his and his friends' alter egos, after all.  
  
The warriors gathered to the priestess, but they couldn't all meet her immediately. And because they met Nakago first, they mostly lay their loyalties with him.  
  
Even Nakago couldn't figure on some things.  
  
Even Nakago wasn't a perfect sadist. Just a very efficient killer.  
  
The world of illusion... was incredible. More incredible to a foreigner, as he had been, than to one born to it.  
  
But at the end, only that shell was left.  
--------------------------  
Even though they'd passed Natalie's house on the way, she walked Rose all the way to her house. Rose knew that, for the sake of an interesting conversation, Natalie would always walk a few extra blocks.   
  
On the other hand, if she couldn't make her friend believe the stories she'd told her, had it all been a waste?  
  
Rose was at her computer no more than two minutes after the girls hugged good night. Precious little of what her searches turned up was in English; one of her regular chat friends knew Japanese, but he wasn't around to translate for her. So she listed names for herself: Soi, herself. Suboshi/Amiboshi... she sighed. She couldn't think of Sean the same way, if they'd only been drawn together as warriors. She might have thought it was love, when he spoke to her last year and she saw so much of herself in him. But if he had been Amiboshi, could she, having been Soi, possibly leave her heart with him? Rose was a romantic, but she was practical, after all.  
  
Nakago. Maybe she wasn't so practical. Thinking of Nakago still ripped her into pieces. She wouldn't love anyone just for having been Nakago, but she remembered how she might have spoken quite differently if Soi, living, clinging to the general's side, had been asked. In that life and all others, she'd thought, nothing could matter more to her.  
  
As drawn as she was to Seit, too, sometimes, she would certainly never think of him as she had Nakago. She couldn't help being haunted by speaking to a boy with a face so much like the man she'd given her life to protect. She wondered if that ability to devote herself completely had died, too, back then.  
  
She moved on to the last names. Tomo, her rival, and she couldn't be sure... she might have found Tomo, again. Miboshi, who she'd never really known. Why should she know him now? And Ashitare... poor Ashitare.  
  
It was such a cruel world, she mused, finally turning off the screen she'd been staring blankly at. As bad as this one.   
  
Still, she was eager to remember, before she saw Yui again. She'd have to call Seit tomorrow and get the phone number, too...  
----------------------------  
'Why aren't you being honest with her?' he asked himself.  
  
'Because I'm not safe,' he finally answered.  
  
He caught himself talking to himself a lot, when he had no one else's mind to look into for answers. That lack of knowledge made him uncomfortable sometimes, and he told himself so.  
  
'And the others?' He didn't even have to answer that. They never really knew him, anyway.  
  
Besides, he shouldn't let himself speak out loud at this hour. Couldn't he even keep his own thoughts quiet?  
---------------------------  
  
AN: I hope I got Chiriko's Sequential Story name right. I haven't been able to find many translations, and I haven't read his in quite a while.   
I also messed with the timing a little. I thought Jacob deserved a little time to explain himself. I hope this thing is making some sense, at least?  
Repost: I can't believe i had Amiboshi's name in place of Ashitare's for that long! that must have been confusing.. apologies to anyone who was reading. 


	5. Common interaction

Even Out of Battle Mode  
Chapter 5  
  
by Laly Konstantin  
  
Reincarnations:  
Ron - Suboshi  
Sean - Amiboshi  
Rose - Soi  
Seit - claims Nakago, but others disagree  
Natalie - claims none  
Jacob ?  
___________________________  
  
Ron was already situated in the 'Box' - their anti-clique's gathering place - when Natalie arrived at school on Monday morning. With a lacklustre greeting, she was about to sit down several feet away, but she changed her mind at the last moment and collapsed next to his outstretched legs.  
  
'Hey, Ron, I have a question for you.' Their eyes met - or almost, Nat thought. Ron always looked like he was focusing a little above everyone else's eyes. 'Do you know what's going on with Rose and Sean?'   
  
Ron blinked, and surprise appeared in his expression. 'You mean you don't? I thought you were the one who hears about their problems from Rose.'  
  
Natalie had to laugh. She hadn't missed the similarity between their roles, after all. 'But that's the thing. Rose hasn't been talking about it at all.' She sighed. 'Mostly, she teases me about how I should "remember" by now.'  
  
Too late, she realised that Ron had been claiming 'memories,' too, and she looked up ready to offer an apology. Ron's gaze wasn't offended, however; in fact, he was getting an inquisitive expression unlike anything she'd seen in him before.   
  
Finally, he shrugged. 'That's basically what Sean and I spent the whole weekend doing. It kept him from moping, for one thing.'  
  
'Well, what's he moping about anyway? These past-life memories are coming between him and Rose?' Natalie couldn't block the disbelief out of her voice. 'I know they're romantics, but you'd think they'd get over it.'  
  
Ron made an odd humming sound. 'Mmm. It's not that easy, you know. How much has Rose told you about their memories?'  
  
'Nothing. Practically.' Natalie leaned back and stared at the ceiling. 'She says she doesn't want to mislead me, or block my memories from coming back accurately.' Snapping her head down, she finally let go of the question that she hadn't dared to ask. 'Do you really think you knew me back then? Rose is completely convinced, but she's always been saying things like that and finding reasons she and I are closer than anyone else could ever be. You're not like that. So, really...' Natalie trailed off, rather than repeating her question. And rather than watching Ron's reaction, she looked down to the glossy tile floor.  
  
Ron hadn't really thought about it. 'I don't think so. But I don't know. I knew Sean because he was important to me, and... actually, my family.'   
  
'Your family. You mean, Sean was?' Natalie tilted her head, surprised she remembered that. But Ron shook his head.  
  
'He was. But that's not what I mean. My family now.' Ron abruptly stopped again, though he should have known better.  
  
'You mean you knew them too? Who were they?' Natalie saw a few of their friends approaching, and suspected this conversation didn't have long to live, so she gave Ron an urgent look.  
  
Unfortunately, he didn't want to rush this. Not if he had a chance to put it off indefinitely. 'I don't want to discuss it right now.'  
  
Natalie fell dramatically onto her backpack, not hiding her irritation. She was used to hitting such stone walls with Ron, but the momentum she'd gathered through the conversation made this one particularly irritating. She absently tossed hellos to those who showed up, but her mind stayed with Ron.  
  
He had to be the most closed-off person she'd ever met, she decided again.  
________________________________________________  
  
It was strange to wait at the bus stop again, after so many months she'd walked with Sean so they could spend that time together. Last night, when he'd finally thrown open the door and stalked out of her house, she'd humoured a vague thought that at least she'd be on time for school the next day.  
  
Of course, it hadn't worked out quite as she'd planned. However much she tried to call on her Soi-self to get through what had happened, she couldn't get over her relationship with Sean in a few hours. It was that simple. And though she hadn't cried, exactly, she hadn't slept particularly well either.   
  
It was now nine in the morning. At this point, she wasn't sure why she should go to school at all. But she would, she decided, if it would hold off some of the memories.  
  
Even if it meant facing the others, after her dreams last night...  
___________________________________  
  
Ron, pencil in hand, allowed French verb conjugations to drift through his mind without making a lasting impression. He wondered how to write 'I killed my enemy's family.' Somehow, verbs like 'kill' hadn't come up yet.   
  
He could really care less what the others thought of Suboshi, he decided, except for Sean. It was an uncomfortable position to find himself in. Ever since they were children, he'd been the stable one, the one Sean came to with problems and the one who never seemed particularly troubled by anything.  
  
Funny how much that meant to him. It was as though he'd subconsciously fought - fought, he realised, being a very Suboshi way to describe it - to escape from everything he had been as a star of Seiryuu. He didn't rely on his family for support. He didn't let emotions rule him. When he disagreed with something, he did so openly and immediately...  
  
That train of thought dissolved. Staring out the window, he saw Sean walk up the hill. Late as usual. Ron looked away, trying to convince himself that he didn't need Sean's approval, and that he had his trust. That nothing between them had to change because of who they had been before.   
  
It was the argument Sean had planned to use on Rose, so he couldn't very well reject it if Ron said the same.  
_____________________________________  
  
Sean had tried to tell himself Rose wouldn't get so caught up in their reincarnations that she'd insist on ending their relationship. He'd tried to talk through his initial suspicions with Ron, and he'd rehearsed the declaration that nothing had to change now because of who they'd been before at least eight times. Then, on Sunday, he had walked over to Rose's house.  
  
Now, with the memories that caused the conflict blocked out by recollection of the conflict itself, he cursed himself for knowing her so well. Rose always behaved as though she were the reasonable one when they argued, and he was a frantic child who couldn't be expected to understand more than a few points repeated over and over. And she wouldn't listen. Once her mind was made up...  
  
Once her mind was made up... He couldn't think. He walked along the midsize street, wishing on Monday morning that could go back to Sunday night. He should have been reasonable (except he'd tried to be, she just wouldn't listen). He should have been less desperate, less frightening (but could she blame him for wanting to hold her, at least one more time? Yes, she could).  
  
He should... he sighed. He *had* told her he loved her, that no matter who they had been he believed in now, and he wished she felt the same way.  
  
She, of course, had taken that as a play for guilt, and the argument had continued. He'd become more and more emotional. He thought, if there were any justice, that that should have been enough proof for her that, even though he had been Amiboshi, he wasn't Amiboshi.  
  
Then, with her stubbornness, he had to admit she shared more than a past with Soi.  
  
Sean arrived at the high school, and shoved open the door. Late, as usual; he wondered what time it was, but decided to wait out the end of the period in the art classroom. Unfortunately, he was only halfway down the hallway when he saw Rose come in by another door. Their eyes met.   
  
As he was about to race toward her and try to talk to her again, and at least make sure there were no hard feelings from last night (or rather, sort out the feelings there were), she just turned away and took the nearest staircase. Up. With a sinking realisation, Sean remembered she had art for the first two classes of the morning.  
  
Resigned to wandering the halls, Seanthought about how tired Rose had looked as she pulled herself up the first few stairs. She always looked tired.  
  
Still, although he knew he shouldn't be, he was glad to know their breakup - he hesitated at the thought, but it had been a breakup, and for good - the breakup was affecting her, too.  
____________________________-  
  
Natalie slid into the desk behind Seit. 'Good morning.'  
  
He turned around, almost startled. She rarely managed to startle him, he mused. 'Good morning, Natalie. How are you?'  
  
'Well enough. You?' Natalie settled her bag down, hair falling over her face.   
  
Seit waited for her to sit up before answering, something vague about how the weekend had been unremarkable. It amazed even him, sometimes, how he could produce impressive enough speech without even thinking about what he said.  
  
Whatever he said, Natalie nodded politely in response. 'Did you ever call the people who stopped by?'   
  
Seit showed a little alarm. 'Yui and the others? I didn't. I expected they would call me.'  
  
'Hmm.' Natalie, apparently disinterested, opened her history book. 'They seemed like interesting people. Even if I'm not involved in the whole past-lives mess.'  
  
She couldn't have seen Seit's reassured smile as he turned around, but it was there. 'A mess indeed. It should be interesting to see the others today.'  
  
Natalie shrugged and looked up. 'I talked to Ron already,' she told the back of his head. 'I guess none of you see it that way, but it's pretty amusing. What I've heard, anyway.'  
  
Seit wondered exactly what she had heard, then. Perhaps, he should start making sure she heard more of the story from him. To that end, he kept their conversation going until the bell rang.  
  
'I'm still amazed to see everyone taking it so seriously,' Natalie admitted, half to herself, before relative silence fell over the room.   
__________________________________________________  
AN: Finally up. I hope i'm handling the breakup well... I don't want it to come across as too dramatic or too cold. It's a weird thing for me to try writing. 


	6. Six, no, there are seven, remember?

Even Out of Battle Mode  
Chapter 6  
  
by Laly Konstantin  
  
Reincarnations:  
Ron - Suboshi  
Sean - Amiboshi  
Rose - Soi  
Seit - claims Nakago  
Natalie - claims none  
Jacob ?  
___________________________  
  
Tetsuya stared at the pink paper on his windshield, as stunned as an evil overlord whose palace had come crashing down around him.  
  
'I never get tickets! Never!'  
  
He hesitantly removed the little intruder and held it, knowing he couldn't solve anything by crumpling it into a ball and throwing it at the next bus.  
  
He'd have to sort this out with Jacob. He reached for the phone in the glove compartment, so he could call and explain the story, only to realise that he'd left it back at the house. Charging.  
  
He sighed. Ticketed at a library. What was happening to his good luck?  
  
Down the block, he heard a cel phone ring. Its owner, a girl who was evidently waiting for the bus, answered it, exclaimed very unhappily, and hung up. He ran down, and stumblingly asked if he could use it for a moment.  
  
The girl shrugged, pulled the phone back out of her trenchcoat's pocket, and gave him a threatening joke-glare as she warned him, 'Don't steal it or I'll bite you.'  
  
As he gave it back, he breathed a sigh of relief. 'All okay. Thank you...'  
  
'Len,' the girl filled in.  
  
He nodded. 'Tetsuya. Pleased to meet you!' he called as he ran back toward the car.  
  
What was it with needing to use other people's phones, these days?  
__________________________________  
  
The commotion had already started by the time Len got to the Box.  
  
While she'd been getting ratted out for skipping English again, apparently, she'd missed a bit of a show. First, Ron told her detachedly from his choice spot on the sidelines, Natalie had asked Keith if she could use his cel phone. If she bought him a candy bar? The phone had been granted as charity, in the end.  
  
Natalie had been asking whoever she called to look for an envelope - something Ron said he'd explain later, meaning he'd probably never get around to it - when Seit arrived with his daily Dr. Pepper. He'd immediately recognised what she was talking about, apparently, and confronted her. A struggle over the phoneensued; Natalie finally giving it to him, only to have him end the call.  
  
Len couldn't be sure how long the verbal battle had been going on now, but it didn't seem likely to stop soon.  
  
'If you don't have a problem with me talking to them, why won't you at least let me come with you today so I can write that number down?' Natalie could make a show of being rational, apparently.  
  
Seit wasn't impressed, though. 'I can't believe you called my family behind my back to get the phone number.'  
  
Natalie slammed a foot into the ground. 'I wasn't calling behind your back. You just hadn't shown up yet, or I would've made you do it.'  
  
'Oh, I appreciate that one. Why don't you ask *us* about it, instead?' Seit almost managed to sound concerned.  
  
Natalie looked to the ceiling for answers. 'None of you can tell me anything. "Who were you? Wait, I'll spoil your memory." I just want to know what's going on.'  
  
'Why?' Seit dragged the request out.  
  
'Friendly concern isn't enough?' Natalie quickly moved her head, checking for... someone. She saw Ron, and winced a little. 'Not you, Ron. But you know what's going on.'  
  
Ron apparently didn't welcome the attention, but Len was interested. 'You know what's going on?'  
  
Ron sighed. 'Natalie, if you can pull yourself away, could we talk?'  
  
Len rolled her eyes. 'I always miss the good stuff, don't I?' she inquired of Keith and May.  
_____________________________  
  
Rose, sat on the bottom step on the south entrance of the school, buried her head in her hands. It wasn't working. It just wasn't. She couldn't live a normal day, knowing she might see Sean any second. And they'd never talk it out rationally, and they'd never...  
  
'If you don't want to argue, why are you following us outside? And fighting with us?' The voice emerged with Ron, but then Natalie appeared through the bulletproof doors, glaring backward. Neither of them noticed Rose, but Seit saw her the instant he stepped out.  
  
'Rose!' he exclaimed, friendly and at the same time making enemies of the others very quickly.  
  
Rose managed a weak smile, and Natalie whipped her head around and dropped down the stairs to reach her.   
  
'Are you all right? I haven't seen you all day.'  
  
Rose just smiled again, leaning against the railing. 'The usual... I didn't want to chance the Box today.'  
  
Ron, at the top of the flight, shook his head. Sean had said the same, before lunch.  
  
Seit hadn't remained in place, and now stood just behind Natalie, intending to get Rose's attention. 'What didn't you want to chance?'  
  
Rose sighed. 'Sean...'  
  
Ron managed to catch Natalie's eye when it strayed from Rose for an instant. He gestured for her to come back up, and they'd find somewhere else to talk. Natalie, however, was right between the others, and probably couldn't leave without being noticed.  
  
Well, screw it, she decided, and moved anyway.  
  
'Are you going back in?' Rose asked.  
  
'Just to get my bag,' Natalie explained. Hardly a time she should leave, but there wasn't much she could do if Seit was around, anyway. She opened the door, and slipped in to find Ron waiting just inside.   
  
'*Now* will you try to explain?'   
  
Ron shrugged. 'What was going on with Seit?'  
  
'I don't know. He was talking about the whole situation in history this morning, so I decided to call those people. And then that didn't work... what's his problem?' Natalie slapped the wall. 'Weird thing to get annoyed over.'  
  
Ron was at a loss, and none of the explanations that came to mind were particularly soothing. 'I have no idea.' Natalie turned the frustrated look on him. 'But I can tell you what I was saying this morning, if you really want to know.'   
  
Moving away from the entrance, in case Seit decided to ditch Rose and continue the chase, Natalie nodded. 'Everything, if that's okay.'  
  
He told her about his family. And Tamahome's family, now that he'd had a few dull morning hours to think about it clearly. He told her about the seishi, as briefly as he could, since it was a long story. Naturally, Natalie wanted details. She didn't get many of them, but she managed to grill him about himself - well, his former self - and a little about his twin, too. He couldn't even think of an entire lifetime in fifteen minutes, but he attempted it.   
  
Why? Because he'd decided Natalie wasn't one of them. She only wondered, she didn't actually care. In fact, she seemed rather happy to hear her stoic friend talk about the people he'd killed, and the priestess he'd served, and the fact that he might have lived in another world, but it had been this one in which he died.  
  
She even complimented him, when they split up to go to their respective classes after lunch. 'You've definitely changed, Ron. Suboshi.' Her tone was hard to read, but that happened to be exactly what he wanted to hear, when all was said and done.  
__________________________________  
  
Seit unlocked the front door and stepped inside. He hadn't expected things to go downhill so fast - first the trouble with Natalie, then Rose telling him about her breakup with Sean over the weekend. The situation would cause problems on its own, naturally enough, but he would have preferred to have a little more control over it. Well, he had to know what was going on anyway...  
  
'Seit?' a voice erupted from nowhere, materialising into his stepfather's form in the hallway. 'Someone just called for you.'  
  
'Who?' Seit was on alert. Yes, he *had* told Rose he would find her after school, but he'd hoped she would let him 'forget' again.  
  
'A girl... I couldn't catch her name. The number's on the ID.'  
  
Seit moved past the other man to check. Priest, Jacob. 'Oh, was it Yui?' he asked with relief.  
  
'Sounds right. Who's Yui?' His stepfather couldn't be blamed for the inept pronunciation. 'Do you have another girl in your life, now?'  
  
Seit picked up the phone, halting as he registered the comment. '*Another* girl?'  
  
'I thought you were practically with Natalie,' his stepfather suggested. Internally, Seit winced. Of course he did. His mother did, their teachers did, everybody did. But he shrugged off the comment and dialed 'another girl's' number.  
  
How irritating. Natalie wasn't even attractive. Now, Rose was another story, but when people mistook those two for siblings they must have recognised the ugly sister easily. Natalie... no.   
  
An answer. One of those guys. 'Hi, may I speak with Yui?'  
  
'Who's calling?'  
  
'Seit.'   
  
He waited. The other phone switched hands. 'Hi, Seit. How are you?'  
  
'I'm fine. What's going on? I'm told you called.' He glanced at his stepfather, who was still watching. Didn't he have work to do?  
  
'I did. I thought we should all meet again, somewhere. We should make plans.'  
  
'Perhaps.'  
  
'Are the others there?' Yui inquired hopefully.  
  
'No, I just got home...' a knock on the door, and Seit turned around. He closed his eyes in agitation. 'Actually, yes, now they're here. They just showed up. Excuse me.'  
  
Rose peered in through the door. Behind her, Natalie appeared to be watching something interesting on the street.   
  
He let them in, gesturing to the phone as an excuse for his failure to greet them.   
  
'Could you talk to them about plans, and find what works?' Yui suggested from her end of the line.   
  
'I could. Shall I call you back in a few minutes?' Seit gestured for the others to sit down, and Rose winked comically. Yui agreed, and he was off the hook.  
  
Or perhaps back on it, considering...  
  
'Who was that?' Natalie asked, almost offhand.  
  
'Yui,' he answered. 'I thought I'd call her, but then you two showed up.'  
________________________  
  
Natalie was thrilled when Seit offered iced tea. Of course Rose accepted the offer - and not only did they step into the kitchen, but Seit's stepfather decided to follow them when they did. For the sake of conversation, or something.  
  
She'd had to look for the half-envelope a little, but it was right by the stereo. As quickly as possible, she folded it and slid it into her pocket.  
  
'Natalie!' Rose called. She willingly heeded her. In the kitchen, she found that Rose and Seit were discussing their past lives rather intensely. What else? Natalie put on a show of 'I don't know what's going on, what does it matter?' and declared she was only in the way.  
  
The protests were so insincere, they were easy to fight off. Besides, Rose really was there to talk to Seit, but she knew that her friend had other plans.  
  
Natalie was back outside minutes after she'd come in.  
________________________  
  
Keisuke watched Yui hang up, a little disappointed. 'No plan yet?"   
  
Yui smiled. 'He's calling back. Apparently, he has company.'  
  
Keisuke let out a relieved breath. 'So you won't have to meet Nakago alone, after all.'  
  
Yui raised an eyebrow. 'I wasn't planning to meet him alone in the first place, but... it's not like he's dangerous.' Yui crossed the room and sat down next to Keisuke. 'Besides, wouldn't you and Tetsuya come with me?'  
  
Keisuke couldn't say anything. How could they keep justifying the presence of strangers? 'They might want to just see you.'  
  
Yui blinked. 'I'm not saying I couldn't handle that, but I thought you'd want to come.' Did she sound hurt?  
  
'We would! It's just... we weren't in the book. And - well, we still say that all the time, don't we? We can't say that around them!' Keisuke was about to start sweating from the tension.  
  
'Why not?' Yui replied. 'I think I should tell them.'  
  
'Just so they don't find out by accident?'  
  
Yui shook her head. 'I owe it to them. Yeah, so they don't find out by accident - that's part of it too. But I think it's only fair...' Yui stared at her hands. 'Besides, they're real now. It might even help, if they know it was only a book.' She looked up at Keisuke. 'I know it helps me, sometimes. It was real, but it wasn't. I'm here, now, and I can be a different person. When I was in the book, maybe what I did... the decisions I made...'  
  
Keisuke knew a bad turn of thought when he saw one, and tried to halt it. 'Yui, don't worry about that.' He put a hand on her shoulder. 'Maybe you're right. It might help, since they do exist now... oh, man, don't cry!' Yui wasn't, but it looked like she was about to. He helplessly waved his hands through the air. 'Let's go for a walk or something. We can take the phone with us!'  
  
Yui raised her hands to her face, trying to get rid of any tears before they could fall. She smiled, nodded, and stood up. 'A walk sounds good right now. It'll clear my head.'   
-----------------  
AN: Wow, I thought I'd left this story for dead.  
  
Tetsuya's got me on the phone thing. Then, I didn't even write the beginning of this chapter until the rest was finished (or so I thought). Len's one of those serendipitous characters, but I think I know what to do with her now. (Incidentally, her real name is probably Katherine. She refuses to use it for reasons of her own.) 


	7. What you sow

Even Out of Battle Mode  
by Laly Konstantin  
  
disclaimer in chapter one.  
  
Reincarnations:  
Ron - Suboshi  
Sean - Amiboshi  
Rose - Soi  
Seit - claims Nakago  
Natalie - claims none  
Jacob ?  
Len ?  
___________________________  
-back in time a little, for more about Len-  
  
If Len had any say in the matter, she would have been somewhere else. That somewhere preferably being Oregon, having lunch with Hannah, and with a little luck planning which party they'd go to and get drunk at this weekend. Instead, she was draining the last of her gas station coffee, having successfully evaded another gym class.  
  
She sighed, climbing the stairs to the school's entrance and checking her watch. Fifteen minutes left of the day... she could slip into the art room, of course, like she had back when she was dating Richard. Bitchard, as she not-so-affectionately thought of him since he'd dumped her for one of her (ex) guy friends.   
  
Len unhooked her headphonse from around the back of her head, and nodded to the art teacher as she walked in. He didn't look pleased - well, he never looked pleased, and he wouldn't raise trouble about her hiding out in his room. She slipped around the tables to an area in the back, an area frequented both by the most serious students and the not-exactly-students.   
  
'Hey, um.. you,' she greeted Ron, who was staring at a canvas more than he was actually applying paint to it. He looked up, and indifferently returned the hello. She commented on the painting, he complained about the painting, and eventually she sat down. Eventually, he took his brushes over to the sink to rinse them off. Same old... Len sighed.  
  
Ron, returning, made a 'Hmm?' sound.  
  
'Life is boring,' Len informed him.  
__________________________________  
  
Natalie muttered to herself. She'd been so thrilled to get the number, so very ecstatic - and when she called, what of it? No one was home to answer. She'd left a message, asking them to call her, and sat down to read the paper and stew about her bad timing for a while.  
__________________________________  
  
Keisuke closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sunlight, forming quite an 'it's great to be alive!' sort of tableau. Perhaps it wasn't perfect, but his heart wasn't really in it. He'd been trying to stay cheerful around Yui. A whole lot of good it did, when she probably wasn't even looking at him.  
  
Keisuke mentally kicked himself. That sounds bad, man, really bad, he told himself. Crush was over two years ago, remember? Your best friend's long-term girlfriend, remember? Don't make the readers suspicious.  
  
For her part, Yui couldn't decide what to think about. She wanted to spend a few hours not obsessing over her reincarnated warriors, and let the thing play itself out. She wanted to appreciate being away from home - the relative dullness of college, her part-time job, her family (or lack thereof).   
  
Since she wasn't doing very well... she turned, and realised Keisuke was looking a little troubled. 'Keisuke? What's on your mind?'  
  
He turned his head in surprise, and smiled. 'Nothing, really.'  
  
Yui laughed in frustration. 'Talk. Please?' I'm going a little crazy here, she wanted to add.  
  
'Why do you think your -'  
  
'Please don't make it about the seishi!' she interrupted.  
  
' - um, incredibly handsome and charming friend Keisuke is still single after all these years?' he finished, grinning weakly. Great subject! But if she wanted distraction, she could have it.  
  
Yui tilted her head thoughtfully. 'Hmm. Interesting question... I always figured you weren't looking, really. You're too much of a nice guy, right?'  
  
Keisuke gave her a look. 'What's that supposed to mean?' Girls made no sense, he reminded himself. Hence the dilemma currently being addressed.  
  
'I don't know. You're nice to everyone, but you never seem to take extra interest in anyone. I guess. I can't say I've seen you "in action" a lot - maybe you should talk to Tetsuya about that one.'  
  
'If I were going to learn anything about it from him, I think I'd know it by now.' Keisuke's face turned a little red, for some reason - namely, that he *had* tried to learn by example, and it hadn't helped.  
  
Yui had exactly zero words with which to respond to that, so perhaps it was a good time for Tetsuya's cel phone to ring.  
  
'Great! I thought you might have it,' Tetsuya exclaimed after the customary greetings were exchanged. 'Listen, I just got back to Jacob's, and there's a message from one of those kids.'  
  
Those kids, Yui mused. They're older than I was when you started dating me. 'Who? Can I get the number and call now?'  
  
Tetsuya agreed. 'Natalie, the one... I can't remember. Number 583-2500,' he read off. 'Will you be back soon?'   
  
'Sure. Keisuke and I were just taking a walk.'   
  
Tetsuya turned a little blue - but of course, she couldn't see him. 'Can I talk to him for a minute?' he finally managed. He couldn't help it - a certain switch in his subconcious simply went off sometimes, and his brain started screaming 'MY girlfriend! Mine!'  
  
Unfortunately, this left him with nothing very diplomatic to say to Keisuke. Since this *was* a longtime best friend he was dealing with, he didn't say any of the undiplomatic things, either - just confirmed that his friends weren't lost in a strange city, would in fact be back soon, and would call that one girl as soon as this conversation ended.  
_________________________________  
  
Len and Ron trotted down the supermarket aisle, seeking chips. 'Funyons!' he finally exclaimed.  
  
Len paused to give him an odd look, then spotted her own saviours. 'Fritos!'  
  
The two had left together after school, Len to get the hell out and Ron to get out before he ran into any of the others involved in his current messed-up situation. Their paths home did not coincide for very long, but he'd mentioned the grocery store in passing and Len had asked to come along.   
  
Asked, rather than invited himself. Ron appreciated that. Their conversation had been flowing ever since.  
  
'So wait a minute. You're a sophomore?' he asked her, as she knelt down for a red and golden bag.  
  
'Huh?' she responded, pausing with her hands among the snacks. 'Oh, grade. I'm a freshman, actually.'  
  
'You're a freshman?' he remarked in disbelief. 'I had no idea.'  
  
Len shrugged. 'I get that a lot. Most people think I'm a senior.'  
  
Ron half-winced. 'I always got that too, just because of my height. Freshmen aren't taaall,' he mocked, as Len stood up.   
  
'Are we getting anything to drink?'  
  
'What do you mean, are *we* getting? Do you actually have money to buy those?'  
  
Len looked annoyed. 'Of course I have money! Okay, do *you* want a drink? Because I know I do and I may as well get ditched if you don't and you're leaving before I do.'  
  
Ron shrugged. 'I have Sprite at home, so it'd be silly to buy something here.'  
  
Len's eyes lit up. 'You have Sprite at home? Think I could, I don't know, tag along, and then take one while you're not looking?'  
  
Ron fixed her with an odd look. 'Did you *mean* to say all of that out loud?' This girl was funny. Even with those scary eyes of hers - which he hadn't noticed before, a glinting gold that suggested evil in the form of puppies stealing sneakers - he supposed that she was less dully depressing than his current friends.   
  
That could be a welcome change.  
_____________________________  
  
'I'd be thrilled to meet you somewhere tonight!' Natalie said. Joy, joy. She would finally get some answers. 'Oh, but... I'll have to see about getting a ride. Can I call you at this number?'  
  
'Of course,' Yui told her. 'And I'm sure we could pick you up, if that's a problem. What about the others?'  
  
Natalie hesitated. 'I guess that's okay.'  
  
'Okay?'  
  
'Well, to be honest... they won't tell me anything. I don't think I'm really involved in it, so maybe I shouldn't bother you without them around; but, well, I want to know what's going on.'   
  
Just simple curiousity? Yui wondered. Well, perhaps it would be best. If nothing else, she might be able to learn what her seishi were really like this time around, rather than what they were like around *her.*  
  
Yui considered explaining this to Natalie, but decided that could come later. At six o'clock, to be precise, at a coffee shop near Jacob's house. Natalie declared it walking distance from hers, as well. The girl sounded genuinely happy; Yui was starting to like her. Maybe she would understand, then, about trading the stories of past lives for stories of this one.  
  
When Yui and Keisuke arrived at Jacob's, they found Tetsuya on the phone with Seit. Trying to be civil. Trying very hard... Yui took over.   
  
Seit was in on tonight too, after all. It was Keisuke's idea, however, to invite him at seven, not six.  
  
Needless to say, at that point, he and Tetsuya both determined that they would be coming along as well.  
___________________________  
  
AN:   
::Jacob storms around behind Laly's seat at the computer, and starts to sing.::  
  
Jacob: I work hard for the money.. so hard for it, HONEY... I work hard for the money, where the HELL am I in this fic?  
  
Laly: Ouch. You have a point there. I mean, you're supposed to be a main character.   
  
Let's see. Next chapter should finally *be* a meeting of Yui with her seishi, and I'll see if Jacob can tag along. Anyone who has comments, please make them! I don't know what you people want... if anything... even tell me to stop writing. I think I could do that.  
  
::Seit then approaches, interrupting the rant, and taps Laly on the shoulder.::  
  
Seit: Vilifying me enough, Madam Author?  
  
Laly: Oh, come on! The series character can't trust you! You're *Nakago*!  
  
Seit: And I remind you of your ex.  
  
Laly: Would. You. Kindly. Shut. Up?  
  
Seit: Oh, are you going to write me out, now?  
  
Laly: Don't give me any ideas. 


	8. Before eight, and already a problem

Even Out of Battle Mode  
by Laly Konstantin  
  
disclaimer in chapter one.  
  
Reincarnations:  
Ron - Suboshi  
Sean - Amiboshi  
Rose - Soi  
Seit - claims Nakago  
Natalie - claims none  
Jacob ?  
Len ?  
_______________________________  
  
It would be so comforting, right then, to reach out and seize someone's mind.  
  
Jacob had learned to deal with loneliness years ago, mostly filling the void through actual conversation and socialising, but there were still moments he felt desperately disconnected.  
  
This one came as he rounded the corner to the coffeehouse, trailing behind his friends by several feet. From this distance, he couldn't understand much of what they said, and he'd rather not intrude. He felt increasingly uncomfortable around them, and was almost - not quite, but dangerously close to - having regrets about contacting them in the first place.  
  
Well, why had he done it? Because it was exciting at first, that was why. The game, the discovery, and faking, faking it. Realising that he didn't need mind control to figure out what people were thinking, as long as he made it clear what he wanted them to believe about himself.  
  
He decided, kicking at an acorn on the sidewalk, that he was something of a manipulative bastard at heart.  
  
The three Japanese stopped at the coffee shop door, waiting for him to catch up. He smiled in thanks, making sincere eye contact and trying to radiate innocent curiousity. He had to justify his place here somehow; as their host, he asked to come as a favour, just so he could learn more about the situation. It was a lie, and a poor way to keep them around.  
  
But he needed them around. It was so lonely, otherwise.  
_________________________  
  
After he hung up the phone, Seit remained in the hallway, standing and thinking. There was something so odd about talking to Rose, lately. Something that spoke of windy hilltops and flickering torches in corridors. He hadn't remembered anything very well since that first meeting with Yui - the memories had been a deluge then, brief and so rapidly following one another that he couldn't remember which way was up, much less assume that what had been a real then should be anything but dream or illusion now. Or vice versa.  
  
But how could it be anything less than real?  
  
Rose had admitted to him that she didn't have full memory now - she had, she thought, for a few moments at the beginning, but now she couldn't think of what she had seen. When Seit told her what she said, she replied with disbelief.  
  
'What?!?' she'd half-shrieked. 'That makes no sense. What is going on here?'  
  
They could only trade so many memories - a lot of their memories so far were the same, or at least similar. Rose had more extras than he did - the more he thought about it, Seit was more convinced that he didn't care to remember much of what he hadn't already remembered.  
  
There, the brick wall. He still had most of an hour to kill, but he didn't intend to spend it thinking in circles. He would get answers from Yui, wouldn't he?   
  
He went into his room, settled at his desk, and started to draw.  
_______________________   
  
Natalie saw them coming - finally! - and took off her headphones. She took another sip of chai, unnecessarily hurried, then waved across the room to greet them as well as get their attention. Yui had brought both of the Japanese guys as well as the guy they were staying with... oh, well. Maybe not a girls' night out, but it was fine with her.  
  
Conversations never flow like a gentle stream across the plains, but for the first few minutes Natalie worried that no one would get around to talking. Fortunately, there's a limit to how many awkward looks five people can exchange before one of them breaks down and tries something, anywthing, to get it started.  
  
It was Jacob. 'Maybe I'm just thirsty, but I think we should at least order coffee if we're going to hang around a coffee shop all night.' It was on him, he declared, and gathered orders from everyone before rising and heading for the counter.  
  
'Quite a host,' Natalie commented. 'So, um, about... well, what everyone under the sun knows except me, I guess.'  
  
Keisuke had the most experience telling the story, but he deferred to Yui at first. At the point where she'd become too involved to really give a subjective telling, he took over - getting help from Yui when his English dried up. Soon after that, Tetsuya started to haltingly add his commentary. On it went.  
________________  
  
Jacob had fingered the mints displayed at the counter, the truffles, the biscotti jars. He'd been tempted by the After Eight mints - they must buy them from the British shop downtown - but decided he didn't like the number.   
  
Seven, plus the priestess. All on the hit list. He wondered where they were now, despite what he'd learned from Duke, and from his Japanese guests. He didn't mean recently, he meant *now*.   
  
He shook his head to clear it, and to order. The counter help gave him a cardboard carrier for the drinks, and he thanked her sincerely. It was only a matter of waiting, from there. He could still be patient, couldn't he?  
  
Toying with a red-wrapped bon-bon, he wondered if the Suzaku reincarnations had ever needed therapy.  
_______________  
  
Amidst the blizzard of information, Natalie hadn't noticed when Jacob returned to the table. Eventually, it occurred to her that everyone else had a drink in front of them, and she swung her head over to the formerly empty seat. 'Oh, God! Thank you. Sorry.'  
  
The story had taken about half an hour to tell, and her head was spinning. She ran through it in her head - Sean the one with divided loyalties, and the one who survived it all, more or less. Ron his grief-stricken twin brother, and Yui's servant. Rose was the lightning rod, right? Ooh, not the best way to pose that question. Seit was the manipulative shogun.  
  
'That leaves three, right?'   
  
Yui nodded. 'Three we haven't identified. What do you think? Still not Tomo, Miboshi, or Ashitare? No recollection?'  
  
Natalie shook her head. 'I'm sure of it. I'm not involved.' At that moment, she caught Jacob's eye. Wanted to look away, but she couldn't.  
  
'Think,' he said. 'I'm sure that you *are* involved. You should remember before it gets any worse.'  
___________  
  
He couldn't help it. It had once driven him mad, having access to so many minds that he couldn't separate his own thoughts from theirs, hearing a thousand flighty or ignorant comments that, no matter how foolish their thinkers, had still never been voiced. The lowest of the low, the darkest of the frustration, the most salacious of the joyful.  
  
But it was a habit, and one he'd avoided for so long that he knew indulging it again would be sweeter than... sweeter than...  
  
So he invoked the god he'd thought must be long dead, and he'd twisted a long-vanished child's toy in his mind.  
  
He'd trapped her gaze smoothly and effectively, seeking the chill that he was so sure he could call back. Then he'd lost control.  
_______________  
  
Yui froze. Keisuke and Tetsuya had taken up a side conversation, half-whispering in Japanese, but they stopped talking too. As the words hit Natalie, she realised that something was very wrong with them.  
  
It hit Jacob, too. His face reddened, and he blinked as though he'd just woken up from a trance.   
  
'..What was that you just said?' Yui hesitantly inquired. 'I didn't think either of you would speak...'  
  
The words slammed against the inside of Natalie's head, losing their sound but not their meaning. Out of them grew a thousand other sentences, commands barked across palace rooms and battlefields, not-so-endearing whispers into the ear that wasn't pressed into a silk pillow.  
  
Pretty, she thought. They called me pretty, and they laughed, and I ignored it all.   
  
She thought she remembered something, then: dreaming of blood.  
  
A bell chimed as the coffee shop door opened.  
__________________  
  
AN: I really didn't mean to hang this story off of anything. If it's any help, I believe this is more of an escarpment than a cliff.  
  
Jacob: Sure, you bring me back to pay for coffee.  
  
Laly: Hey, don't knock it. You get the supafly psychic phenomena, right? 


	9. So together

Even Out of Battle Mode  
by Laly Konstantin  
Reincarnations:  
Ron - Suboshi  
Sean - Amiboshi  
Rose - Soi  
Seit ?  
Natalie ?  
Jacob ?  
Len ?  
_________________________________  
  
He walked up and down the tree-lined streets, trying to find the little park with the stream that he used to visit with his brothers. Some sense of direction I have, he thought.   
  
He really didn't need any more time alone, any more time to think things over. To be completely honest, he was just brooding at this point. Anything he might have thought of to make sense of things, he'd already come up with. It was still a matter of time, and things would settle in his head eventually. Until then, he'd probably be better off finding ways to distract himself. Right?  
  
Well, he thought, nice tree. That's a start - the tree is absolutely fascinating, the way the street light is playing off of it -  
  
-street light? How long had he been out here?  
  
Sean swung his bag over to the other shoulder, and turned steadfastly downhill. It was time to get home. Home was downhill. Simple things, just to keep distracted.   
_________________________  
  
Rose couldn't remember where she'd heard it said that events were cowards, and had to run in packs, but her afternoon fit the description perfectly.   
  
She'd stayed around at Seit's house long enough to split a plate of nachos, and to talk vaguely about the situation. That odd situation... she'd begun to doubt her initial certainty, because the more she tried to mull over her memories, the harder they were to call up. Images grew shady, and emotions were completely lost; the facts that stayed with her only helped a little.   
  
If she remembered the way to her room in the Kutou palace, where she'd been hidden away for a few months, she remembered what it was like to feel restless before she'd even stopped moving. When she thought of tents, she remembered how dry the desert was, and how cold the unforgivingly clear sky had made her. When she thought of Nakago - hard to avoid, when she'd spent over an hour face-to-face with Seit - gratitude emerged. Only that. Seit had almost studiously avoided the subject, and she hadn't wished to mention her last recollection from the past life. Not if he didn't remember. It couldn't have meant much to him, in that case.  
  
She could almost say, as a result, that her feelings in this life were and would remain entirely separate from Soi's no matter how much she recalled. Almost; but that decision felt like a loss, somehow.  
  
She'd met up with Ron and that ex-girlfriend of Richard's - Len, that was her name - a few blocks from Seit's house. Len had offered her Fritos, and Ron had asked if she'd talked to Sean yet. No, she hadn't. She should, he'd said. She had shrugged, and commented that it was just a little too complicated right now. He'd responded with an expression that she'd seen several times before, but never quite learned to read. She'd noticed, then, how Len cocked her head to look up at him, and realised that there might be something interesting going on here. For the sake of observation, she continued along with them. It was on the way home, sorta.  
  
Well, home happened to be a nightmare. The furnace was broken, the repairman was a creep, and her mother had blown up over the situation. Somehow, she'd changed the dispute into another reminder that Rose needed to find a job - not soon, but now. Of course, at that Rose had stalked off on her own with the stated purpose of finding one. Tonight.  
  
Then she'd almost been ticketed for jaywalking, which she'd never actually believed would happen to anyone. Between that and her frustration at finding any place that would hire a not-quite-sixteen-year-old, she was about to collapse on any random corner and sulk away the rest of the century.  
  
Well, a good long walk might cool her off. If she walked up to the coffee shop in the King street area, she might find out if they were hiring. Most importantly, however, she probably wouldn't get home until after dark.  
____________________  
  
Time flies when you're in training mode. As a result, Len never realised that she'd been at Ron's place for four hours until his sister walked in and informed them that dinner would be ready very, very soon. Len was, she discovered, welcome to stay; however, she should have been home by five-thirty. Period.   
  
How serendipitous that she'd left her cel phone off, so that she'd probably missed the warning call. She wasn't about to switch it on and check...  
  
She left feeling happy, though. Funny how she and Ron had seemed to bond over everything, considering she never would have judged them as similar people. She ran a few possibilities through her head at the bus stop, and as she walked the last few blocks home she had a funny feeling, like pieces coming together.  
________________________  
  
It wasn't even a matter of avoidance, Jacob suspected as Seit brought a chair over to the table. Natalie had completely shut her mind away.  
  
Perhaps that was a good thing, for now.  
  
'Was I late?' Seit asked good-naturedly, sitting down and glancing at the menu on the wall just long enough to pretend he was deciding what to drink. 'Everyone seems to be here already. Hello.'  
  
As the others greeted him, Natalie pushed her chair away from the table, took her drink in both hands, and walked away. Not a word about it. As she left, she only paused to hold the door open for the girl coming in; and, Jacob but no one else saw, to send a final glare in their direction.  
  
Seit was occupied in other thoughts. He'd come to a realisation that evening, or so he thought; it had arrived with a new blossoming of memory, but he wasn't exactly planning to tell anyone else about it just yet.  
  
Fortunately, he didn't need to. 'Seit,' Yui began, 'there's something we probably should tell you, and make things clearer.'  
  
'Oh?' he responded impartially.  
  
Yui hesitated. 'It's kind of awkward,' Keisuke supplied in an accent it took him a moment to understand.  
  
'It's important though. It explains a lot,' Yui continued. 'You all knew me before, right? Which only makes sense because I was pulled into your world - I mean, Nakago's world, since you aren't him.' She looked into her coffee, then lifted her head again. 'Basically, the way I found your world was in a book.'  
  
Seit spent the next few moments not understanding. 'You found it in a book?'  
  
'It was written in a book,' Tetsuya added. 'Like a novel.'   
  
'You were characters in the book,' Yui said, a little too fast. 'Nakago knew that, but if you don't remember yet, maybe it helps to know.'  
  
Seit's first thought was that he needed a few quiet minutes to think. So, of course, it was the natural moment for Soi to arrive.  
  
Jacob watched Rose's face sort of light up as she caught sight of them. Immediately after that, he saw a pair of arms appear around her neck in a surprise hug. Rose squealed a little in surprise, and turned to see the head that appeared over her shoulder. 'Len!' she shrieked.   
  
A long-lost friend? he wondered. Or maybe...  
  
After they'd greeted each other a little less shrilly, Rose turned back to Jacob's group. 'You guys, this is Len. Len, do you know Seit from school?'  
  
'I've seen him,' Len commented agreeably.  
  
'The others are Jacob - the white guy -' Rose freed her left arm to point - 'Keisuke, Yui, and...' she buried her face in Len's shoulder. 'I don't remember.'  
  
'Tetsuya,' Yui, Jacob, and Keisuke supplied in unison, before the guy thus named could open his mouth.  
  
At this point, Rose and Len became aware that they were blocking traffic in the middle of the coffee shop, and moved over to pull chairs up to the table.   
  
Thus, Len wound up hearing a short version of the story, asking who else was 'a reincarnation,' and getting a little too fascinated for the others' comfort. Yui was secretly hoping that it would trigger something in her, but she was sorely disappointed. She did seem to grasp the book concept more readily than Seit had, at the same time Rose seemed to be absorbing the shock of a not-quite upsetting development.  
  
Keisuke managed to fit in a few inquiries as to how Rose was handling it. 'Are you okay?' earned a nod, and 'We tried to tell Seit more gently, but... um, things start happening...' actually won a sympathetic smile from the girl.   
  
'You're being pretty respectful to the book's antagonists,' she commented a few moments later, startling him.   
  
He had to think that over for a minute. 'Things start to happen, and it's just hard to hold grudges,' he finally justified. He'd gotten over any antagonism toward any 'characters' a long time ago, before he'd even realised it; so he couldn't really call anything up to make him angry now. Another world. Everything had ended well, after all. Considering that, he cast a glance at Tetsuya, then gestured to him from behind his coffee. 'He's the one who's handling it well. He was so pissed when you first turned up...'  
  
'Me?' Rose asked, but he only shook his head before nodding back toward the main conversation. Seit and Len had apparently fallen into a lively debate, moderated by Jacob's dry humour and occasional correction of facts that neither of them had any way of knowing in the first place. Meanwhile, Yui had leaned over to talk to Tetsuya. 'She's involved too,' she whispered in Japanese. 'There's a connection. I think she's the last one.'  
  
'The last one? Isn't that six?' he responded. Her eyes widened, and she shook her head, but didn't think she could say anything else right now. Not only was she now facing Nakago and an expressive combination of Miaka and Soi, but she also had to look into the strange eyes of the new girl. Glowing, almost gold, and there was almost no question in her mind. Yes, this girl was completely human, but... it was funny. For the first time, Yui realised, she was recognising her seishi before the seishi itself - well, herself - had any idea.  
  
She could hardly have recognised her seishi Ashitare, so why was it so easy to see him now?  
  
At the same time, she realised that she'd readily accepted that Natalie was one of them after the odd exchange between her and Jacob. She managed to make a mental note to ask him about it later, before the others intruded on her overtime thoughts and called her back to the conversation at hand.  
  
'Oh, shit. I really need to get home,' Len finally realised in the midst of a comfortable break in conversation. 'I was just going to buy something and get going.' She gave Rose a quick hug, and bid the others goodbye, saying it had been great to meet them. 'Call me next time you're going out.'  
  
Tetsuya shook his head after she left, and said something in Japanese that prompted Yui to give him a funny look.  
  
'What did he say?' Rose asked Keisuke, just as Seit had been ready to ask.  
  
Keisuke shook his head, more interested in hearing out the conversation that continued - much to their frustration - in Japanese.  
  
'He said something about that girl looking like Yui,' Jacob finally surrendered. 'Changing to look like her.'  
  
Then, the composed man who was showing himself to be such a good host so far slapped his forehead violently, stood up from the table, and stared at the now-motionless door.   
  
Five of them had been in that coffee shop that night, but never all together at the same time. So close, and it had only occurred to him now?   
  
The gathering dissolved in the next fifteen minutes, as though his realisation had stolen its momentum; but he was going to get this right, he decided, and it was going to happen in the next few days. This wouldn't be like last time.   
  
They had missed a crucial part of their destiny, and had been very close to fulfilling it in the natural order of things... all, except him.  
  
Why? he asked himself. More importantly: if he'd known from the beginning that they were all together, and that he was the single isolated case, would he have even tried to find them?  
  
He'd wanted so badly to be the leader last time, and circumstance screwed him over. This time, he thought, we're finally all together. The idea swelled to block out the goodbyes and the drive home so completely that, as he fell asleep, he realised that he'd missed the most important question it imposed:  
  
Why the hell should he care?  
________________________  
AN: This story does not seem to remember who's supposed to be in control of it, here... 


End file.
